


the true guardian

by SleepyMaddy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode AU: s12e08 The Haunting of Villa Diodati, basically i tried to write evil!13 and it became about sad!13 again oops, character study? sort of?, cyberplanner!13, references to Nightmare in Silver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22975351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepyMaddy/pseuds/SleepyMaddy
Summary: Last time she’d faced off a cyber version of herself, he’d had all that fancy kit on his face, all blinking lights and harsh metal. This time it’s a lot more subtle; faint flashes of shifting silver gleaming in her hair, her teeth, her eyes.Or: what if the cybermen's plan had been to get the Doctor to absorb the cyberium and become the cyberplanner?
Comments: 13
Kudos: 81





	the true guardian

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for episode 8!
> 
> thank you silent_h for making this actually readable ily

The cyberium hovers in the air, suspended in time, a mass of swirling, writhing, _living_ silver. The Lone Cyberman is reaching out to it, and the Doctor is _sick_ of losing.

Sometimes even she can’t win, yes –especially when the cybermen are involved– but she has lost enough times; maybe, just maybe, this time she doesn’t have to. The desperate plan she’d tried not to think about takes the forefront, and she reaches out to the cyberium too.

There’s a dizzying rush of _hopevictoryrelief_ when the cyberium almost seems to hesitate, its tendrils retracting from the rusted metal hand and dancing in her direction instead. It rapidly shifts to _panicangerfear_ when it reverses again. Still, it hovers much closer to _her_ than to him. 

“And it chooses me,” she all but snarls at him. “Interesting. Time lord magnetism.” 

The uncovered eye of the cyberman is bright, gleaming with rage and _defeat_ and she opens her mind, lowering her barriers and enticing the AI just a little bit closer to her. 

“Looks like I’m the true guardian,” she says and, as if it heard her, the silver rushes in her direction.

The first contact is like putting her hand into an open flame, and she grasps her own arm out of reflex against the nerve-searingly hot pain that’s spreading through it. Still, she doesn’t lose her smile, teeth bared as she stares down the cyberman. 

“Oh, I can feel it already, fusing to me. It feels very at home!” 

She has to push the quips through gritted teeth but it’s worth it even as the cyberium makes its way in, in, in; using her nerves as climbing rope, every centimetre gained pure agony. It’ll reach her mind soon enough, and she doesn’t want to imagine the kind of pain _that’s_ going to be, but it doesn’t matter because she’s _winning_ and the cybermen are _losing_ and all is right with the world for _once_. 

“Recognizing great host material,” she continues, reveling in the cyberman’s silence as he stares her down, unable to stop her. “Not to big myself up, but I don’t think it’ll vacate me without a fight.”

It’s a brag, but it’s also true. The fusion with the AI is already more violent than she’d anticipated, and it hasn’t even reached her brain yet.

“You are correct.”

Time stands still.

And then she realizes her mistake. The gleam in the cyberman’s eye isn’t defeat; it’s the opposite. Slowly, the part of his face that’s not covered in rusted metal twists into the worst thing she’s seen so far tonight –a smile.

He speaks again, just as the cyberium reaches its silvery fingers into her mind. “You are the true guardian.”

Her victory is snatched from her. She _lost_ , _again_ , and everything goes dark.

Yaz stares in horror with the others as the Doctor’s face goes from ruthless victory to horrified realization to– nothing. Her head slumps forward, and although she remains standing, her features are completely blank. The sudden silence is deafening, and Yaz stops breathing. It almost feels like she never will again, like she’s forgotten how to.

The Doctor’s eyelids flutter and she lifts her head, slowly dragging an unfocused gaze around the room. Even the cyberman is completely still.

“Doctor?” she asks, because it feels like she’s about to implode and she needs to do _something_.

The Doctor snaps her head towards her and Yaz takes a step back. Her friend’s eyes are wide and unblinking and blindingly _silver_.

The Cyberplanner laughs.

  
  


When she comes to, it takes her a moment to work out where she is. It’s dark, she’s curled up on the floor, and the pain reverberating around her skull is barely tolerable enough to stay conscious. She tries to sit up, but everything is fuzzy and not quite right, or maybe not quite _real_ and–

Oh.

She suppresses a groan –she knows where she is. The place she hates most in the universe. 

Inside her own head. 

And she’s not alone.

There’s someone else, standing a few feet away, or maybe a few miles—not that distance means anything in here—and she has to squint through the pain to make them out more clearly.

_Oh, come_ on _._

Worst _still_ , she’s staring at herself. 

It’s not _actually_ her, of course, but it’s using her appearance; right down to the waistcoat she’d proudly unearthed from the depths of the TARDIS wardrobe. Last time she’d faced off a cyber version of herself, he’d had all that fancy kit on his face, all blinking lights and harsh metal. This time it’s a lot more subtle; faint flashes of shifting silver gleaming in her hair, her teeth, her eyes. Still, it means there’s no question: this had been the cyberman’s— the _cyberium’s_ plan all along. 

“And you fell right for it,” the Cyberplanner says, suddenly standing right in front of her. “Just like we knew you would.”

They're _inside her mind_ and it _hurts_ , but she still manages to lift her head. 

“Oh, 'cuz you know me so well, do ya?”

It’s not like she spends hours looking at herself in the mirror, but there’s something so _wrong_ about staring at herself and not have the image match her actions. It’s like meeting a past regeneration, like she’s already dead and gone. She tries to focus on the Cyberplanner’s words instead of _that_.

“We do, actually,” it says in a flat tone, tilting its – _her_ – head to the side. “The cybermen never forgot you, Doctor. We saw your potential as Cyberplanner, all those years ago. You managed to beat us then, and that defeat was analyzed. We were ready this time.”

This might not be physically real but she _hates_ being at another being's feet. She pulls herself upright, digging her nails into her palms to stop herself from screaming.

“So that was the plan, then,” she concludes, and she can’t stop the current of _stupistupidarrogantfoolish_ running through her consciousness. 

She should have guessed. 

She should have _known_.

“Yes. We pulled together every cyber database in the universe, and created the cyberium. It studied you, extrapolated your weaknesses and created the perfect set up. All so _I_ could exist.” Its impassive expression melts into a smile, and it’s so much worse. “The Cyberplanner who will lead us back to our past glory. With my knowledge and your experience, Doctor, this war will be over before it begins.” The smile turns mocking. “Thank you.”

“If you know so much about me,” she says, and her anger is so potent she can almost taste metal around the words, “if you really have access to all that information, then there’s one thing you should already know about me: I’ll stop you. I always do.”

One eyebrow arches as the Cyberplanner starts circling her slowly. “Ah, but that’s not quite true, is it?”

She’s too dizzy to turn and face it. There's a sudden burst of pain, and she has to close her eyes to breathe for a second. “What are you talking about?”

The Cyberplanner comes back into view, self satisfaction radiating off of it in waves. “You don’t _always_ stop us, Doctor. In fact, there’s one specific occasion where you rather monumentally failed to do so.” 

The darkness around them suddenly echoes with a metallic, grating voice: _I-waited. I-waited-for-you_.

She doesn’t realize she’s falling until she’s on the floor, hands over her ears. 

“Yes, that’s the one,” the Cyberplanner says, in a conversational tone. “The Mondasian colony ship.” 

They’re surrounded with flashes of her previous life’s last battlefield, and she doesn’t know if they come from her or it. It’s not like it makes a difference anyway, and she can only flinch as explosions go off and cybermen march across the fields all around them. But it’s not just images; it’s everything, and it’s _hopeless_ and it’s _tired_ and it’s _betrayed_ and it’s _giving up_ , and her hands are _burning_ with regeneration energy that’s been held in for too long.

“You did cause trouble,” it concedes, looking around the images with emotionless eyes, “and you did slow us down. But would you like to know what happened, in the end?” It looks down at her, one corner of its mouth tilting up. “Or do you already know?”

“Shut up,” she grits out, trying desperately to pull her mental defences together, to push the intruder out, but the cyberium’s data streams are embedded deep into her consciousness; so deep it’s like they’ve always been there.

“I’ll tell you anyway.” It crouches next to her, and the Doctor can’t look away. “They all died, Doctor. They made it to the next floor and then we broke through and we _took them all_. You didn’t make a difference at all.” It sighs, before standing back up. “You let them down. Left them behind. And they became the beginning of us. Almost poetic, isn’t it?”

The flashes slowly taper down. 

“Since when do cybermen have a concept of poetry?” she manages to spit out when her head doesn’t feel quite so ready to split open.

“Oh but Doctor, I’m not a cyberman. I’m the Cyberplanner.” The smile almost has a hint of pity to it this time. “I’m so much more, because I’m you as much as I am the cyberium.”

Her response is automatic because the Cyberplanner is in her head and she _sees_ what it is, hatred and war and death and destruction. 

“You’re not me. You’re nothing like me”

“But I am. The cyberium gives me data and information and precedent, but everything else is all _you_.” 

The darkness around them lights up once again: a DNA bomb-riddled Stenza falls from a crane with a faulty teleport; a dalek is being thrown into a supernova; the skithra ship is overloaded, destroying its inhabitants in the process; she’s jamming a perception filter at the top of the Eiffel Tower– 

“All that rage, that anger…” the Cyberplanner continues, staring at the images with a grin that’s so awfully _familiar_. “But also that _delight_ in the carnage, in the destruction. Cybermen don’t _feel_ , Doctor, and yet here it all is, coursing through me. If it can’t come from the cyberium, then it has to come from you.” The images fade but the Cyberplanner’s smile remains. “Cybermen consider emotions as failings, but they have their uses, some of them. These will be what allow us to rise again, better, and that will make us really, truly unstoppable this time. We will take everything; humanity first, and then who knows? All thanks to the Doctor of War.”

The words _burn_ through her mind, but at least they remind her of one truth: she still has a fall back option.

“I could regenerate.”

The Cyberplanner stops moving, before clicking its tongue. “You could.”

“It would force you out. Chances are it’d wipe the cyberium clean, too.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve tried to account for that.”

Hope, just a spark of it, makes an appearance amongst the Doctor’s desperation. “Wanna take that chance?”

The Cyberplanner doesn’t look worried enough for her taste. “How about a deal, instead?”

She _snarls_ at it. “I don’t _deal_ with cybermen.”

She’s ignored. “Instead of regenerating and making it a frankly bad day for everyone, you could stop fighting this. Your defenses are in shreds anyway, and you know it.” A pause as the Cyberplanner smiles –like it knows it’s already won. “If you do this, Earth lives.”

She’s suddenly so, so cold. “ _What_?”

The smile is gone from the Cyberplanner’s face, and its eyes look the most silver they have so far. “If you force the cyberium out, the cyberman will take it, and then he will bring his troops to him. Earth will be destroyed.”

“It can’t be. This world doesn’t end in 1816.”

The Cyberplanner’s response is nonchalant. “He’s a cyberman, not a Time Lord. He doesn’t care for timelines. Regardless of when Earth is _supposed_ to die, it will burn now.”

The darkness lifts a little and all of a sudden she can see into the villa’s living room, and the way the humans are staring in her direction.

The way her _fam_ is staring at her. 

“Your second home,” the Cyberplanner continues and suddenly the light is burning orange and she’s choking on smoke and ash. “ _Oh_. Or maybe your only home, now,” the Cyberplanner corrects, grinning.

She manages to get a hold on her mental defenses enough to push any thought of Gallifrey far, _far_ away for now.

The Cyberplanner claps once and the sound makes her wince. “Anyway, _your_ choice, Doctor, as _always_. Let me do what I have to do, help us restore the cyber empire, or force me out and watch your precious earth burn. Which one will it be?”

_Save the poet, save the universe_.

Gallifrey burns, burns, burns; smoke and ash and _bone_.

_Watch people burn now, or tomorrow_.

Except it’s not Gallifrey, it’s _Earth_ ; continents and oceans and _people_ turned to dust and raging fire, and it’s all _gone_.

_Sometimes, even I can’t win_.

Closing her eyes, the Doctor loses.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, there it is, we're basically two weeks late, but we did it folks! this is mostly about distracting myself before the finale let's be honest because who's ready for jodie whittaker's "blistering performance"? not me, thats for sure
> 
> come yell at me about 13 on tumblr: @taardisblue


End file.
